Structure in a novel (part 3)
“The Writer’s Journey: mythic structures for storytellers & screenwriters” by Christopher Vogler draws from “The hero with a thousand faces” by Joseph Campbell. Vogler applies the earlier work by Campbell showing how it has influenced film makers such as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. In fact Lucas seems to have swallowed the concept of the hero’s journey whole and is regurgitating it verbatim onto our screens with each of the Star Wars movies that come and go in the cinemas.
Vogler writes
At heart, despite its infinite variety, the hero’s story is always a journey. A hero leaves her comfortable, ordinary surroundings to venture into a challenging, unfamiliar world. It may be an outward journey to an actual place: a labyrinth, forest or cave, a strange city or country, a new locale that becomes the arena for her conflict with the antagonistic, challenging forces.But there are many stories that take the hero on an inward journey, one of the mind, the heart, the spirit. In any good story the hero grows and changes, making the journey from one way of being to the next: from despair to hope, weakness to strength, folly to wisdom, love to hate, and back again. It’s these emotional journeys that hook an audience and make a story worth watching.
There is a concept in the science fiction genre of “world building” - the creation of a universe, characters and science, The book is a vehicle that merely explores the world created by the author; “world building” stories are deep on backstory but light on actual plot and over the years have been found to be less popular than other works. One obvious reason for the failure of world building to capture the hearts & minds of readers is their lack of journey: the focus on exposition of the mechanics of the universe eclipses the more important journey that individuals make through the world the author has created.
Similarly there are very character heavy books which spend too much time on the soap opera of multiple character interactions that they forget to propell the reader on through the journey until it is almost too late. One notable example weighs in at about 290,000 words and waits until 90% of the way through to get to the real point of the book; interactions between a favourite cast of far too many characters that had built up across the course of several books caused the author to neglect the main viewpoint characters and their own journey until it was almost too late. The action was crushed into the final pages of the book and it finished in what felt like a headlong rush to get the manuscript to print.
“The hero with a thousand faces” takes the characters through their mythic quest through a number of steps:
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What is interesting is that Campell also structures the hero’s journey into three acts, once again drawing on the observation of Aristotle. Vogler summarizes the hero’s journey by saying
Heroes are introduced in the ordinary world, where they receive the call to adventure. They are reluctant at first or refuse the call, but are encouraged by a mentor to cross the first threshold and enter the special world where they encounter tests, allies and enemies. They approach the inmost cave, crossing a second threshold where they endure the supreme ordeal. They take posession of their reward and are pursued on the road back to the ordinary world. They cross the third threshold, experience a resurrection, and are transformed by the experience. They return with the elixir, a boon or treasure to benefit the ordinary world.